The Story of Ethan Allen (1738-1789)

Introduction

"Early in November 1771 Ethan Allen and Remember Baker,
leaders-to-be of the Green Mountain Boys, led a small crowd
(only nine men strong) to the house of Charles Hutchesson, a
sometime corporal in a Highland regiment, who was trying to
set himself up as a farmer near New Perth, on New York's
northern frontier. Setting the house on fire, they told
Hutchesson that "ey had resolved to offer a burnt
sacrifice to the Gods of the World.'"

"One can make a good case...that we need to know as
much about rural crowds.. for their own sake and for the
sake of a fuller understanding of the [American] Revolution.
... it was this rural mobilization that led to the most
bitter internal disputes of the period, both between patriot
and loyalist Americans, and within the patriot camp
itself."

Ethan Allen fought against the New Yorkers for Vermont
and for himself. Ethan was not unlike the rest of the
settlers in Vermont. All of them wanted to provide for
their families. This was a Lockian unalienable
right they
believed they should have. The unalienable right of liberty
in the colonies was based on who owned land. The only way
Allen and the settlers believed they could have this right,
was to form a state independent of New York and Britain.